PIPING TODAY • 44

Among the archives now at the Clan Donald Centre at Armadale on Skye is a receipt dated Edinburgh,

November 3, 1748, from one Adam Barclay on account of Sir James MacDonald as pay-ment “To a sett of Hyland Pipes of cocawood mounted with Ivory at £3 - 3 sh”.1 Barclay was an Edinburgh-based wood turner and the earliest pipemaker we are able to identify by name, therefore an important figure in the history of piping. It is also now possible to add a little more to his background and the possible connection to another slightly later pipemaker, Hugh Robertson.

Adam Barclay would have been born some-time towards the end of the 17th century as he was already working as a turner in Edinburgh by May 1712 when he received the sum of 18 shillings from James Nisbet, a soldier in the Castle of Edinburgh on account of Major James Conel, for making eight billiard balls for him. At that time billiards was played on a table cov-ered with green woollen cloth, (to imitate grass), and with cushions stuffed with felt, but the two balls were struck with a sort of hockey stick shaped implement and the balls themselves were probably still turned out of wood.2 Between 1731 and 1737, Adam Barclay, turner, appears in the accounts of Colin Mitchell, an Edin-burgh goldsmith. He was receiving payments for making the various wooden parts of objects like snuffboxes and so on, which the goldsmith was using as the base for his own work. Clearly, therefore, the turner’s work would have been of high quality as anyone able to afford the work of a goldsmith would have demanded a similar standard throughout.3

It is therefore surprising that he does not appear in the Edinburgh Burgess Rolls. Turn-ers were certainly admitted as burgesses and he clearly enjoyed that status, if his presence among the 45 persons drawn from the Ed-inburgh great and good to form an assize, or court, in 1744 is any indication.

The printed indictment for the trial of one James MacPherson, then prisoner in the Tolbooth of Lanark, for the crime of stealing

horses, included not just the names of the as-size but also the list of the 21 witnesses, along with a resume of the indictment. A guilty verdict looked pretty much like a forgone conclusion.4

Adam Barclay, described as a turner, died in the West Kirk Parish, Edinburgh, in 1753 and was buried in the St Cuthbert’s graveyard on September 13.5 By the time of his death he was living in Mary King’s Close at the foot of the Lawnmarket, according to the Window Tax record for 1752,6 and he was paying the tax for 15 ‘windows’. (Technically a ‘window’ was any pane of glass which allowed natural light into a habitable area.) Since property owners with more than 10 windows were exempt from also paying an Annuity Tax and Adam is not listed on the Annuity Tax Roll, it would appear that he owned his property and was one of the more substantial residents of the close. One curious feature of the Window and Annuity Tax Rolls is that whereas nearly all the other residents of the close have their occupations noted against their names, Adam Barclay does not, perhaps indicating that he was no longer actively practis-ing as a turner, which, if he can be identified with the Adam Barclay born in St Cuthberts Parish in 1680, might possibly be the case as he would have been around 73 years of age by that time.7

This then raises the question whether there is any connection between Barclay and Hugh Robertson who, just over a year after the older

man’s death, appears in the records described as a ‘turner’ on his marriage in December 1754 to a Margaret Maners. She was described as the daughter of William Maners Baxter in Cramond.8 An appropriate time to marry, if he was indeed a young man stepping into the shoes of an established turner’s business, and he does seem to have been a young man at that time. In 1821, the Highland Society of London made a payment of £2-2 to “Hugh Robertson who made the prize pipe since institution of the competition, a man upwards of 90 years of age confined to bed”.9

This would suggest a birth date of circa 1731 and therefore he can probably be identified with the Hugh Robertson, born in Leith in 1733,10 which would have made him just 21 years old at the time of his marriage. Presumably, in theory, he was not long out of his apprenticeship, ex-cept there is no trace of him in the Edinburgh Apprentice Rolls and neither, like Barclay before him, was he ever made a Burgess of Edinburgh. This implies that for whatever reason both these turners seem to have been outside the normal Edinburgh establishment.

The first record of Robertson making bagpipes comes from the MacLeod accounts when, in 1765, a pair of Highland Pipes were bought from him for £2-10 shillings.11 This is followed by an account from Hugh Robertson to Sir Alexander MacDonald dated August 3, 1767, for a “set of Highland Pipes mounted with Ivory” at a cost of £3-0-0, which was paid in

by Keith Sanger

Two Edinburgh Bagpipe MakersAdam Barclay and Hugh Robertson

HIS

TORY

‘...war was back in vogue and Napoleon presented a much larger threat

to the physical security of the UK...This in turn resulted in more “Highland Regiments”

being raised, all with two pipers on the establishment of their grenadier companies

and therefore requiring instruments’

PIPING TODAY • 45

HIS

TORY

Edinburgh the same day by Mr John MacLean, who was a surgeon and Sir Alexander’s part-time chamberlain for the Trotternish division of the Skye Estate.12 From the timing of this purchase it seems likely that these pipes were being bought on behalf of John MacArthur whose father, Neil MacArthur’s testament had been belatedly recorded on July 18, only days before the wood to make the instrument had been purchased.13 Neil had actually died in August 1762 while serving as a piper with the 77th or Montgomery Highlanders in Havan-nah. Although the money in his possession at that time was given to one of the officers to be returned to his heirs, it had taken some time and effort by Lady Margaret MacDonald after the regiment returned to the UK to actually recover the money for the piper’s family.14 The legacy received by young John MacArthur amounted to £30 7sh 6d, (or £364 and 10 shillings Scots), either way more than enough for him to have invested in a new set of pipes.

Some of these same people are involved in the next reference to the purchase of “Highland Pipes” to be made by Hugh Robertson, which comes from a letter written in 1774 by Dr John MacLean to Sir James Grant concerning the young Grant piper John Cumming. Cumming was at that time in Skye having tuition from Donald MacArthur in Trotternish. The doctor was suggesting that the pupil was at the stage where he needed some pipes and recommended that they should be got from “one Robertson a turner at Edinburgh who makes them well when under the inspection of a Skillful person”.

He then goes on to suggest as that skilful person, Lord MacDonald’s servant then in

Edinburgh, who at that point would have been John MacArthur.15 Whether by that time Hugh Robertson’s work still needed ‘overseeing’ is an open question. It may be that Dr MacLean was harking back to when he was last involved in 1767, or possibly by then mouthblown ‘high-land pipes’ may have been a relatively small part of the turner’s output. Certainly by 1770, Hugh Robertson was apparently making high-quality lowland instruments without any supervision, judging by a receipt among the Duke of Buccleuch’s papers.

The receipt was in response to a letter from a Kenneth MacKenzie Esq in London to Mr John Alves, the Duke’s chamberlain in Dalkeith, stating that the Duke had requested that he was to pay the price of the bagpipes made for the Duke’s servant, a James Grieg. The pipes were to be sent at the first opportunity to London. The receipt was in two parts, “Hugh Robertson, Turner in Edinbr for a pair of Ivory BagPipes with silver Mounting sent to London in Feb 7 1770” ,and then under the date of February 19, 1770, “His Grace the Duke of Buccliugh, Do to Hugh Robertson Turner in Edinburgh, Feb 19, To a pair of Ivory pipes with silver mounting and Chains, £9- 19 - 6, Received the above accompt in full by the hands of Mr John Alves and the same is hereby Discharged (and signed) by Hugh Robertson”.16

Robertson had also started to have an entry in the Edinburgh Directories starting with the Aitchison-produced edition for 1774 - 1775 where he was listed as “Robertson Hugh, Turner, Castlehill”. As payment was required by the publisher for inclusion and was propor-tional to the size of the entry, then the entries provide an idea of how Robertson wanted to

appear to his customers, as well as reflecting changing circumstances in respect to the wider historical context of the period during which he was working. It is therefore significant that in his entry for the 1775 - 1776 directory he changed his description to “Robertson, Hugh, turner and pipe-maker, and curious in making all kinds of wind musical instruments, Castle-hill” before in the 1776 - 1777 edition returning to just the description of Turner which he then retained through to 1792.17

So what had stimulated the expanded entry for pipes and woodwinds? As there would have been some time lag between entries being accepted by the directory publisher and the actual date of the directory’s publication, it is likely that Robertson was trying to attract the attention of the former customers of another bagpipe and woodwind maker called Nicholas Kerr, who had died in 1773.18 As it was, political events had already moved in Robertson’s favour when in 1775 in America, the rebellion (as it was viewed from the United Kingdom perspec-tive) led to the raising of a number of Highland Regiments which by that time all had an estab-lishment of two pipers which would certainly have provided more business for Robertson. Although the military demand for Highland pipes would have decreased at the cessation of hostilities in 1782, by then the Highland Society Piping Competitions had commenced and Robertson had become the supplier of the annual prize pipe.

The next change to Robertson’s directory entries starts with the 1793-1794 edition where he is described as “Ivory Turner and Bagpipe maker”, which continued through to 1797-

Pictured above is the receipt for a set of bagpipes from Adam Barclay to Sir James MacDonald in 1748. Piping Today would like to thank the Clan Donalds Lands Trust for their permission to print the receipt.

PIPING TODAY • 46

HIS

TORY

1798 after which it changes to just “Ivory Turner” until the last entry for Robertson which occurs in 1804. Once again the background circumstances suggest reasons for these changes. Firstly, through using ivory on a regular basis in his instrument work, he had probably gained far more experience of turning ivory than any other Edinburgh turners so pitching for a specialist part of the market would have made sense. Secondly, in 1793, a teacher of ‘Irish pipes’ also appears in the Edinburgh directories and Robertson would probably have been looking to make the ‘Irish pipes’ for any students who could afford them.19

In addition, war was back in vogue and Napoleon presented a much larger threat to the physical security of the UK and resulted in almost two complimentary forces being raised, one for use on the continent while another in the form of the Fencible Regiments providing a defence against invasion. This in turn resulted in more ‘Highland Regiments’ being raised, all with two pipers on the establishment of their grenadier companies and therefore requiring instruments.

This time round Hugh Robertson had some initial competition from another pipe-maker called James Munro, who was also holding the post of piper to the Canongate. Possibly indicat-ing that Edinburgh was not large enough for two pipe-makers, Munro moved to Inverness where he was presumably guaranteed some business from the regiments based at Fort George, including making the two instruments for Sir James Grant’s 1st (Strathspey) Fencible Regiment.20 However, one suspects that Hugh Robertson had a smile on his face when, accord-ing to the Visitors Book kept by the 1st Fencible Regiment after they had moved to Edinburgh in 1797, he signed in as visiting the regiment on business.21

Robertson had made the Highland Society of London prize pipe ever since the inception of the competitions, but for a few years commenc-ing in 1812 the society switched to ordering the instruments from Malcolm MacGregor. Exactly why is unclear because there was certainly some confusion surrounding the change as, according

to the 1812 accounts, Hugh Robertson was paid £4 4sh for the “pipe near finished before told Highland Society of London had ordered from Malcolm MacGregor”, and again in 1813 he received £3 3sh for “part of prize pipe already made”. It was probably a consequence of the system whereby a sub-committee of the Highland Society of Scotland organised the competition in Scotland but it was the High-land Society of London who actually provided the money to run it. It is probably significant that Malcolm MacGregor lived in London and no doubt had the London Society’s ear. It is not clear what sort of market would have existed for Highland pipes in London, probably not much, so it may also be significant that William Shep-herd, of the Edinburgh music business Gow and Shepherd, died in 1812. That resulted in the company requiring to be dissolved, a lengthy process. They seem to have been MacGregor’s main outlet in Scotland, which would have represented a significant disruption to his sales and probably his cash flow as the winding up process ran from the 1808 accounts and was not completed through the Court of Session processes until 1819.22

However in 1816, the orders for the prize pipe eventually reverted to Robertson and he then resumed supplying the instruments at a price of £8 until 1821 when Donald MacDon-ald took over, charging the higher price of £10 10sh. Hugh Robertson died in 1822 and, ac-cording to the Edinburgh Burial Register where he was described as a turner, he was interred on March 28.23 He was survived by an only daughter called Catherine, born in 1755,24 and who, according to Sir John Graham Dalyell, played the pipes.25 In 1797 she married a James Winter, described as a ‘Butler’ or ‘manservant’, they seemed to have remained childless and she died in Edinburgh, described as a widow aged 80 years of age, in 1834.26 l

1. Sanger, K, Who Paid the Pipemaker, Piping Times, 40, No 8, (May 1988).2. National Archives of Scotland, (NAS), GD26/9/74/853. NAS, RH15/176/94. NAS GD113/3/9865. Old Parish Records, (OPR), Deaths 685/010148 Edinburgh6. Gilhooley, J. A Directory of Edinburgh in 1752, (1988). 62. Of the 26 people listed in the close just six were paying

window tax and only one of them, a Glover, (with 19) had more windows than Adam Barclay. 7. OPR. Births 685/00200300185 St Cuthberts. 5 December 1680, Adam son of John Barclay and Helen Kilpatrick.8. OPR. Marriages 685/00104800259. 8 December 1754.9. National Library of Scotland, Deposit 268. 10. OPR. Births 692/00100300024, Leith North, Hugh son born 3rd February 1733 to David Robertson, Weaver and Agnes Lawson his spouse. 11. Grant, I. F, The MacLeods, (1959), p 491. where his name is given as ‘R Robertson, turner Edinburgh’ the ‘R’ pre-sumably being a misreading for ‘H’.12. Sanger, K, Who paid the Pipemaker, Piping Times, 40, No 8, (May 1988). Although the cost for the pipes was £3, the actual sum Robertson received was £2 5sh 4d as the account for the purchase of ‘44Lib Coccoa Wood at 4 pence per Lib’ which came to £ 0 14sh 8d had already been paid by the pur-chaser to a James Farquar on the 23 July. Indicating that the instrument must have taken only weeks to make.13. NAS. CC8/8/120/87314. Sanger, K, Niel MacArthur, Piping Times. 38, No 9, (June 1986); National Library of Scotland MS 1309, f 168 and f 173. The main problem seems to have been that the officer concerned had been deployed directly from the West Indies to Ireland without returning to Scotland first.15. NAS. GD248/168/13/1816. NAS. GD224/208/2/11617. Edinburgh Directories (Aitchison’s) 1774 – 1775 Robertson Hugh Turner Castlehill1775 – 1776 Robertson Hugh turner and pipe-maker, and curious in making all kinds of wind musical instruments, Castlehill1776 – 1777 Robertson Hugh Turner Castlehill1777 – 1778 Robertson Hugh Turner Castlehill1778 – 1779 Robertson Hugh Turner Castlehill1780 – 1781 Robertson Hugh Turner Castlehill1782 – 1783 Robertson Hugh Turner Castlehill1784 – 1785 no mention1786 – 1788 Robertson Hugh Turner Castlehill ( follow-ing entry reads Robertson Mrs, lets rooms Castlehill)1788 – 1790 no mention1790 – 1792 Robertson Hugh Turner Castlehill1793 – 1794 Robertson Hugh Ivory Turner and Bagpipe maker Castlehill1794 – 1795 Robertson Hugh Ivory Turner and Bagpipe maker Castlehill1795 – 1796 Robertson H Ivory Turner and Bagpipe maker Castlehill1796 – 1797 Robertson Hugh Ivory Turner and Bagpipe maker Castlehill1797 – 1798 Robertson Hugh Ivory Turner and Bagpipe maker Castlehill1799 – 1800 Robertson Hugh Ivory Turner Castlehill1800 – 1801 Robertson Hugh Ivory Turner Castlehill1801 – 1802 Robertson Hugh Ivory Turner Castlehill 1802 – 1803 Robertson Hugh Ivory Turner Castlehill1803 – 1804 Robertson Hugh Ivory Turner Castlehill

18. Sanger, K, Relics of an 18th century Lowland pipemaker, Common Stock. 23, No 1,(June 2008).19. Sanger, K, An Edinburgh bagpipe teacher, Common Stock, 22. No 1, (June 2007).20. NAS. GD248/413/12, GD248/686/121. NAS. GD248/442/1222. NAS. CS96/2320. Over the period covered by these accounts Malcolm MacGregor received the sums of £20 augmented to £45- 3sh (with interest and expenses) and in 1813 ‘To goods invoice £34 6sh’. Not large sums considering that MacGregor made and supplied various wind instruments other than pipes. Or compared to the £10 14sh 6d that was owing to John Murphy the Irish Piper at Eglington Castle for sales of his books of music.23. OPR. Deaths 685/010352 Edinburgh.24. OPR. Births 685/00102900031 Edinburgh, 23 June 1755.25. Dalyell, Sir J. G, Musical Memoirs of Scotland, (1849), 103.26. OPR. Marriages 685/00105200234, Edinburgh, James Winter to Katherine Robertson Daughter of Hugh Rob-ertson, Turner of Tolbooth Parish. 29 March 1797; OPR. Deaths 685/010313, Edinburgh. Catherine Robertson, 11 August 1834

‘Robertson had made the Highland Society of London prize pipe ever since the inception of the competitions, but for a few years commencing in 1812 the society switched to ordering the instruments from Malcolm MacGregor’